Even if this clown did locate here, it would be contingent upon a number of tax breaks and incentives.
Why do we continue to bribe business to manufacture here? We need to put the choke-hold on imports, and eliminate the gap between exploiting labor, and paying a livable wage.
Corporate greed has got us where we are, and we'll stay here unless we mandate change. It doesn't matter who is President.

Why do we continue to bribe business to manufacture here

We do? I thought we bribed businesses to locate their headquarters and their "creative class" engineers and designers here (see: Nike, Adidas, Vestas) while they manufactured somewhere else.

I, for one, would like to see more Greenbriers, Freightliners, and Boeings - but it seems Portland wants nothing of those established companies with manufacturing sites. Portland seems quite content with shutting down all of the Freightliner plants but keeping a small design/headquarters staff here in one office building.

Pretty typical for our area, chase all the business out via regulation/taxes then complain about there being no jobs. The touted Obama green jobs is estimated to cost the US several million jobs. Not exactly what most blue color workers want to happen.

The author raises a good point. If your product is a turd, you can't polish it with sustainability. It reminds me that silly sustainable clothing company called Nau that lasted about a year.

Erik H. - What exactly were the bribes to get Nike and Adidas to locate here? I am not aware of any. Could you be specific with some facts.

P. H. Knight is a local resident who started his business here a long time ago and it grew. Conventional thinking is that Adidas relocated North American HQ to the area to be able to tap Nike employees into their company.

I believe the City of Portland did throw some money Adidas' way.

To all the people who think government "throws money" to successful people - it in fact only allows them to keep more of the wealth they created, via tax breaks.

My family has been building a big stock of incandescent bulbs for the last three years since the 2007 bill phasing out incandescent bulbs. The funny thing about GE is they thought they could game the political economy to increase sales of their higher margin light bulb alternatives like light emitting diodes. But they may not win as many points with the greenies as originally planned.

Compact fluroscents may be more efficient and longer lasting but the light is not soft, and we also discovered these alternatives use more mercury in their manufacture.

A lot of the "green" mantra is cockied in that the government class ignore the huge capital costs of green alternatives, focusing only on the energy component of cost. Take the new Volt electric car with a purchase price almost double that of an energy efficient gasoline powered car. There's a fair chance you might never save enough in gasoline operating costs with the Volt to make up for its capital cost premium. But for the government class such economic illogic doesn't register. I guess you can continue printing fiat money so as to ignore capital cost but eventually printing money has consequences in the form of stagflation or outright hyper inflation.

D: Except for the "clean tech" companies that don't ever make money. Since they have nothing to keep, Salem drops buckets of money on their doorsteps hoping that our Multi-Modal Mecca becomes a Sustainability Shangri-La.

Green is an excuse for the busy body meddlers who enjoy dictating their preferences upon others under the ruse of being better for us all.

There's nothing smart about "smart growth" either.

And Randy Leonard said today on the Lars show that we need more light rail and streetcars because it's how people will get around 50 years from now.

What a fool. Gee 50 years.
Just another lunatic advocating lunacy that requires we all die before he is proven wrong.

"... lunacy that requires we all die before he is proven wrong."

Swing ... and a miss. But sooooo close, missed it by this || much.

The 'Urbanite' article totally misrepresented the 'green' issue -- set up a false-frame premise of his own (un)making and then argued against it. Jack stenographically put it in the headline -- 'green economy' going (or coming) to save us.

'Green' heralds hardly foresee it as saving our bloated corrupt 'economy' of systemic human extinction, or rather, 'bio-death' and us in it.

Instead, indications and trends are showing this future: barren planet Earth.
It seems that failing the aspirational wherewithal to 'go to Mars,' the default process is bringing Mars here.

Earth 2100:

Nothing is coming (or going) to 'save' us.
NO 'scientific breakthrough.'
NO 'creative invention.'
NO 'rapturous epiphany in simultaneous enlightenment seeing the plight of humankind.'
NO 'common bonding in mutual purpose against an off-Earth alien enemy.'

People ('upside down' and 'underwater' in assets/investments) talk about 'toughing it out until the economy bounces back.' The economy is not ever 'bouncing back.'

Yeah, your job is toast. Not too long away. Your business is toast. The world you know is toast. Darn tootin there's gonna be dislocation, suffering, 'economic' fault-shift and tsunami inundation.

Not because the blame is on today's politicians making mistakes. (There's not really much they rightly could do, other than sound warning alarm.) Collapse is inevitable. We passed the tipping point.

Yes economic collapse. Yes climate chaos. Yes natural resources exhaustion, (e.g., petroleum, natural gas, fresh water, fertile soil, minerals and metals). Yes socio-political calamity and devastation.

Inevitable. Greater on-going momentum than humankind's agency can thwart.

The best that we can do is deflect it or sidestep from a direct hit.

That's where 'green' or 'sustainable' comes in. By getting by in local implementation and coordination of self-sufficiency. In a word: socialism, if you will.

It is NOT a 'plot' upon you. It is the only 'plan' with which you survive ... maybe. The best odds, the most favorable percentages: about 1 out of 3. 33%.

Fireman Randy correctly foresees that primarily public transit is the way people are going to get around 50 years from now -- really, sooner than 50 years, in about half that time. He is unlikely to be correct that there is population to get around.

So, no, you won't be dead when he is proven wrong. You'll be dead wrong. From doing squat, waiting for a 'Godot recovery' to save you from your own suicidal non-adaptation. And most of the heralds and foretellers will be also just as dead ... right.

.

'You' (knowing your self facing your own abyss) really better check this out,
pretty much daily. Meet the around world.

World Socialist Web Site

It is not coming to save you.

You are going to it to save what you can.

To all the people who think government "throws money" to successful people - it in fact only allows them to keep more of the wealth they created, via tax breaks.

But when government does not offer those same "breaks" to other taxpayers, that is what we call a subsidy -- government picking winners through favored tax treatment.

I always get a kick out of politicians who claim that "green" jobs will be the path to economic recovery and the cornerstone of the future U.S. economy. We have been told before by no less than the President that these jobs are important because they "cannot be outsourced". Oops. Of course, articles like this one point out that there are tradeoffs.

But shouldn't the environmentalists be happy that CFC bulbs are now being manufactured in China? After all, if they are produced more cheaply they can be sold at lower prices and should therefore be more widely adopted.

But it just isn't enough. There was supposed to be a free lunch here -- new jobs and environmental protection. But in reality, when it comes to this type of policy, only one Progressive constituency can be satisfied -- the other ox gets gored.